As a pastor, the trends that interest me most involve the sharp decline of marriage in the USA and the rise in non-clergy-officiated weddings.

These are the changes that matter, rather than the modern substitution of cupcakes for a wedding cake. The dropping number of marriages and changing face of officiants will shape the lives of American couples ”” and their children ”” for decades to come. These shifts merit some thought as we wrap up this year’s wedding season, which runs May through October and typically covers 70% of all ceremonies.

Fifty years ago, about three-quarters of American adults 18 and older were married. Today, about half are. Nearly 40% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey last year said marriage is becoming obsolete.

Read it all.

St Paul’s, 31 October 2011 The Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles, announced his intention to resign from his post this afternoon. He made his decision known to the Chapter and to the Bishop of London last night and has removed himself from Cathedral operations with immediate effect. He intended to submit his resignation as Dean of St Paul’s to HM the Queen today.

In the light of the Dean’s resignation, the Chapter has unanimously voted to request the Bishop of London to assist them in providing an independent voice on the ongoing situation at St Paul’s. The Bishop has had no part to date in the discussions and decisions made by Chapter and it is felt his input is now required.

Read it all.

Listen to it all if you so desire.

The archbishops’ silence ”“ and that of the wider church ”“ on the crisis at the cathedral is extraordinary, then, given their past remarks. But the truth is they gain nothing from commenting on it.

Siding with protesters would undermine the bishop of London and the dean of St Paul’s, who are already under fire for their actions, and represent an extrajudicial intervention not often seen in the Church of England. To ally themselves with their beleaguered colleagues would make them hypocrites. Those who have aired their views are retired ”“ like Lord Carey ”“ or relatively unknown outside Anglican circles.

However infuriating their reticence, the clerics who bashed the bankers during the global financial meltdown are unlikely to put themselves forward to debate the merits or otherwise of Occupy London, a subject made toxic by the prospect of eviction, but it is inconceivable that they do not have opinions on the events at St Paul’s.

Read it all.

[Dan] Messier knows that as a mainline denomination pastor he faces a dwindling audience.

A report last week said the number of Episcopalians in the United States dropped below 2 million for the first time in decades ”” down 16 percent in the past 10 years. There were 3.5 million members in the mid-1960s.

Some within the church blame the declines on disagreements over the authority of Scripture and the person of Jesus Christ, and the church’s stance on hot-button social issues.

“I think the challenge is changing with the times,” Messier said. “It appears to me that a lot of the churches that are benefitting are places that are non-structural and more open.”

Read it all.

Bishop Jefferts Schori, it is time for you to come out of your cocoon of silence on this topic, as well. The entire Episcopal Church (USA) deserves the truth as to why you regarded a Catholic priest with such a prior record — known to you after being “warned” by his Abbot — as morally fit for reception as a priest into your own Diocese.

Particularly, your Church deserves to know how you reconciled the version of the facts which Father Parry admits he gave you, which was incomplete and admitted only one prior offense in 1987, with the version you heard from his Abbot — and then decided to receive him despite his lies to you.

More particularly, we need to have your own word on the record as to whether or not you received and read the psychological report on Father Parry which Abbot Polan had in his possession and which ended, as Abbot Polan apparently admitted he told you, with a conclusion to the effect that Bede Parry had a propensity to offend again. (This is the same report which the lawsuit filed by one of Fr. Parry’s adolescent victims alleges was sent to you for your information, even though Bishop Edwards of Nevada now denies that it is in the files he has on Fr. Parry.)

Read it all.

Patrick J Marker wrote to Abbot Gregory Polan here including this:

*** During our first telephone conversation, on Monday, April 25, 2011, you shared the following information:

1) You heard something about Bede’s 1981 misconduct at St. John’s “at the time of the incident”.

2) You were aware of an incident involving Bede Parry with a member of the abbey’s choir in the summer of 1987.

3) Bede Parry was sent to New Mexico soon after the 1987 incident.

4) When Bede Parry tried to enter another monastery, he took psychological tests that showed a “proclivity toward sexual misconduct with minors.”

5) You called Parry’s boss at an ambulance company and a woman bishop with the Episcopal Church with the information.

6) You identified the woman bishop as Katharine Jefferts Schori.

7) You told Katharine Jefferts Schori not only about the allegations [plural] against Bede, but also of Bede’s attempt to join another monastery, the psychological testing and his “proclivity”.

8 ) That Katharine Jefferts Schori, despite your revelations, “allowed him to continue to work.”

Read it all carefully.

Read it all.

Update: There is a BBC article on this here.

From here:

The Vacancy in See Committee had a preliminary meeting on 1st October 2011, where we elected Mr Jeremy Taylor, former Diocesan Adviser for Education, as Vice-Chairman. Also at that meeting we put in motion the mechanics for drawing up two documents
Description of the Diocese
Statement of needs, which is divided into four areas
Mission/church growth
Teaching/ministry/vocations
Civil Society/ecumenical links
Governance/structures
The second meeting will take place on November 5th at Church House, when we will be discussing the two draft documents with a view of having them almost complete for the main meeting on November 24th when the committee will meet with the Archbishops’ and Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretaries.
Could I on behalf of all members of the Vacancy in See Committee thank those who have written in with their views.
The Venerable Douglas McKittrick
Chairman of the Vacancy in See Committee

In an ecclesiastical outlook that has recently offered little comfort, the very serious charge of abandonment made against Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina is chilling indeed. The charge is striking, because under his leadership the Diocese of South Carolina has not ”˜abandoned’ the Episcopal Church (as did the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, San Joaquin, and Quincy). What it has done, openly and publicly, is to insulate itself as much as possible from what Lawrence has called the “false gospel” of “indiscriminate inclusivity” advocated by the national church, through a reform of its diocesan laws and constitution. It is precisely this achievement – to remain within the Episcopal Church but not of the Episcopal Church – that has enraged its enemies and spurred these charges.

It is no secret that the national church has been looking for grounds for a legal challenge against South Carolina; yet, we are assured, the information presented against Bishop Lawrence came not from the Presiding Bishop’s office, but from communicants within the diocese – disaffected progressives presumably, following the familiar progressive strategy of using bureaucratic process to advance agendas which otherwise fail to gain support. The Presiding Bishop, however, is not off the hook. One must ask whether her aggressive policy of litigation to quell opposition to her theological agenda has not created the climate and established the precedent for a resort to litigation by other militant progressives. Whether or not they are acting formally in concert, the effect is the same.
The charges will be the first major test of the newly reformed Title IV canons on Discipline. Though these have been criticized for removing due process protections, we have been given assurances that these fears are overblown. Perhaps so: but many eyes will be watching closely to see what justice the Bishop of South Carolina receives under them. A heavy responsibility lies with the Disciplinary Board and its president, Bishop Dorsey Henderson, retired of Upper South Carolina (and recent visitor to St. John’s on behalf of Bishop Benhase), as they investigate these charges, to ensure that these new canons do not become another instrument of coercion. Bishop Henderson and the Board will need your prayers.

To his credit, Bishop Benhase has expressed hope that the charges will be dismissed. Even if they are, the process will be costly in terms of money and morale: a further and needless embitterment of a church already divided and demoralized by unilateral theological change and aggressive litigation. To put it bluntly: the message being sent by these charges (as by the evident hostility of the Presiding Bishop) is that conservative dissent will not be tolerated within the Episcopal Church, and that significant theological differences will be resolved by coercion. One could hardly devise a stronger incentive for conservatives to leave. Militant progressives longing for ideological purity may rejoice at the prospect of getting rid of so much “dead wood” – but those who cherish the Episcopal Church will know that such losses leave it diminished, and not just in numbers or dollars.

This case raises a question for us: given the ascendancy of the agenda of “indiscriminate inclusivity” in the Episcopal Church – will there be a secure place in the Episcopal Church for the conscientious dissent of those who hold to historic Anglican doctrine and worship? That security cannot be taken for granted.

—-The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia

The most perspicuous example of a ministerial exception is the Catholic church’s limitation of membership in the priesthood to males. If a university were to have a rule that only men could serve as professors, it would be vulnerable to a suit brought under the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The difference (or so it has been asserted) is that there is no relationship between professorial skills and gender ”” a woman can perform the duties of a teacher of history or chemistry as well as a man ”” while the tradition of an all-male priesthood is rooted in religious doctrine. So the university would be engaged in discrimination pure and simple, whereas the church’s discrimination is a function of its belief that the all-male priesthood was initiated by Christ in his choice of the apostles.
Were the state to intervene and declare the tradition of an all-male priesthood and the doctrine underlying it unconstitutional, it would be forcing the church to conform to secular norms in violation both of the free exercise clause (the right of a religion to be governed by its own tenets would be curtailed) and the establishment clause (the state would in effect have taken over the management of the church by dictating its hiring practices). (I am rehearsing, not endorsing, these arguments.)

This clear-cut example ”” to which both sides in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC refer frequently ”” may be the only one (and it is only clear-cut because it has behind it 2,000 years of history). For the question quickly becomes one of boundaries ”” how far does the ministerial exception extend? To whom does it apply?…

Read it all.

On Sunday, the day after he was enthroned in Fresno as the new Anglican bishop of the San Joaquin Diocese, the Rev. Eric Menees conducted his first services at St. Matthias Anglican Church in Oakdale.

Read it all.

Nashotah House is one of two orthodox Episcopal seminaries in the country, and the only one of 11 that shapes students in the Anglo-Catholic tradition that emphasizes the church’s Catholic, rather than Protestant, history and culture.

Students come, they say, for any number of reasons: the classical education, with its emphasis on Hebrew and Greek languages; the quasi-monastic culture; the sense of community; the focus on prayer and liturgy.

“This just matches more with my piety,” said Forrest Tucker, 31, a father of four and one on the way, who lives with his family in married-student housing on campus.

“You get into the spiritual rhythm of life here, and it becomes a very important part of your life,” he said.

Read it all.

Read it all.

In an email to the bishop ”” who is Dean Gordon’s boss and on the liberal wing of the church ”” the News Letter asked for an interview in an attempt to get his side of the story, which has featured a string of outspoken denunciations by Anglican clergy of both the bishop and the dean.

As the bishop of Cashel and Ossory, the Rt Rev Burrows is senior to Portadown-born Dean Gordon, who now ministers in Carlow. According to Dean Gordon, the bishop appointed him last year in the full knowledge of his 20-year relationship with talented musician Mark Duley and was aware of their intention to enter a civil partnership once the Republic’s law changed.

Read it all.

The Rev. Justin Hoye was struggling to figure out what, if anything, to say on Sunday to his parishioners at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church about the new turmoil facing the local Roman Catholic diocese.

Days before, news had broken that Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese had been indicted on criminal charges for failing to report a priest found to have pornographic photos of children, including children of his congregants. The priest is accused of having taken more such photographs in the months before church leaders turned them over to law enforcement.

Father Hoye, after reaching out to priests in neighboring parishes ”” all of whom expressed the same uncertainty ”” decided not to address the matter directly from the pulpit but to offer a homily on man and God that emphasized forgiveness.

Read it all.

The Rev. Patrick Augustine grew up a member of Pakistan’s often oppressed Christian minority, but he had to come to the United States to learn humility. As he’s done at every stop on his career, Augustine, rector of La Crosse’s Christ Episcopal Church on Main Street, has devoted himself to working for peace and reconciliation between people of different faiths.

Though a member of a tiny minority – Christians account for less than 2 percent of the Pakistani population – Augustine was accustomed to privilege.

Read it all.

From here:

Bishop Michael had two conversations with Archbishop Rowan who was well aware of the diocese’s situation regarding recent court decisions. Bishop Michael asked him if he would consider casting his eye around the communion for a possible interim appointment for St John’s, Shaughnessy. Archbishop Rowan said that he would and when he bid Bishop Michael farewell he told him that “thoughts were forming.” Since then, he has been very busy preparing for his African trip. Bishop Michael has followed up on the conversation with a letter.

…protestors rounding the corner of Zuccotti Park encountered dozens of white-robed worshipers singing spirituals and blessing the demonstrators while holding signs reading “Blessed are the poor” and brandishing handmade Christian crosses.

The group, calling themselves the “Protest Chaplains,” traveled from Boston to join the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which claims to advocate for “the 99 percent” of Americans against the “1 percent” who control much of the country’s wealth.

The Protest Chaplains, a loose group of mostly Christian students, seminarians and laypeople organized though Facebook, expressed support for the movement the best they knew how: through their faith.

Read it all.

Walkabout 2010: Seeing Jesus with Bishop Mark Lawrence from Your Cathedral on Vimeo.

Watch it all.

Regardless of theological allegiances, ideological positions and ecclesiological affiliations, a lack of justice is a lack of justice and unacceptable in the Church that professes to live in obedience to a just God. Anyone who is seeking justice needs to speak up on behalf of justice and the victims of injustice wherever it is found.

Today it is the Diocese of South Carolina and Bishop Lawrence. It is relatively easy to predict the population which will be targeted next. The only question is, when will it be you?

Read it all.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney has come out in strong support of the proposed poker machine reforms, warning that the penetration of gambling culture into sport and media ”bodes ill for the future of sport in this country”.

The Reverend Peter Jensen used his opening presidential address at the 49th Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney to commend the federal government for its ”moral leadership” on problem gambling as it seeks to introduce mandatory precommitment technology on poker machines.

In his first public statement on the issue, Dr Jensen took aim at sporting associations that create cultural capital ”funded by the real capital of addicts”.

Read it all.

In an atmosphere of prayerful solemnity, the Bishop and Clergy of the Diocese of South Carolina gathered at Saint James Church, James Island, S.C. for more than two hours on Tuesday, October 12. In focus were the “serious charges” that have been made against Bishop Mark Lawrence and the diocese under the new Title IV canons.

Bishop Lawrence began by restating the diocesan vision of “Making Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age” and then traced the history of the current controversy in The Episcopal Church and the many obstacles they presented to pursuing our diocesan vision. He ended with the two recent diocesan conventions in which the diocese refused to be coerced into the Episcopal Church’s embrace of the new title IV canons which violate both due process and the Episcopal Church’s own constitution. Of further concern with the current allegations is that evidently this process doesn’t allow the accused to know who his accusers are.

Lawyer Alan Runyan then made a presentation based on his best understanding of what canonical process seemed to be being used by those in national leadership. It would appear they are proceeding under the abandonment canon with its fast track. Based on what has happened in other dioceses, a deposition of the bishop would be followed by attacks on diocese and the parishes. The picture painted was an ugly one of expensive litigation, confrontation and acrimony in which all involved significantly lost.

It was stressed that individual clergy, vestry, and parishes needed to be informed about the allegations, the purported process, and the implications at every conceivable level: financial, personal, legal and spiritual. All the clergy were encouraged to share their concerns with the bishop or the ordained members of the diocesan Standing Committee.

Two themes underlay the whole discussion. First, the Episcopal Church is in a constitutional crisis in which its own polity is being radically altered in violation of its history and founding documents, yet with no structural provision for a means of resolution when just such foundational disagreements occur. That such a deep dispute has arisen with one of the Episcopal Church’s founding dioceses only adds to the unfortunate environment into which all have been plunged. The Reverend Jeffrey Miller, past President of the Standing Committee stated during the gathering, “The question is not whether we can stay; it is whether they will let us stay and follow what we believe.”

Second, the deeper fracture is about a departure of the Episcopal Church’s leadership from Christian doctrine. Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison (XII Bishop of South Carolina) rose to express his concern with these theological innovations and to voice support for Lawrence. While these include a changed understanding of sexual ethics and Christian marriage, it goes much further to the matter of Scriptural interpretation and authority and the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ. These recent actions mark yet another hindrance to the Diocese of South Carolina’s duty to be faithful to the truth of exactly that gospel and its proclamation to the world.

A city court on Tuesday (Oct. 11) dropped charges against a group of religious and civic leaders who were arrested in July during a prayer vigil for the poor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
The vigil, held at the height of the summer’s debt ceiling debate, aimed to stop Congress from cutting funding to programs that benefit the most needy in the U.S. and abroad.

“We are guilty of one charge: the promotion of social righteousness,” said the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, director of public witness for the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Read it all.

Clergy of the Diocese of South Carolina gathered Tuesday behind closed doors to pray and discuss an investigation by the national Episcopal Church into allegations that their bishop has abandoned the faith, as the denomination continues to wrangle over the ordination of gays and the recognition of same-sex unions.

Read it all.

Bishop Dorsey Henderson, President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, has responded to questions concerning the canonical process underway involving Bishop Mark Lawrence. We appreciate his clarification on a matter of great interest to the church.

Many in the church had assumed that the Lawrence matter was being processed by the normal intake procedures specified under the new Title IV. Included among these were bishops sympathetic to the national church who assumed that this was the beginning of an extended procedure involving the Reference Panel, subsequent Conference and Hearing Panels, and the normal process of notice and opportunity to be heard inherent in the trial process. We were dubious of that assumption ourselves, but that was one of the questions we raised in our earlier piece on this matter. We are grateful for an answer.

It is now clear that there will be no such process. The matter will be considered by the Disciplinary Board for Bishops, meeting as a whole, which will vote whether to certify Bishop Lawrence for abandonment. If it were to certify that Bishop Lawrence has abandoned the church, his ministry would be restricted immediately (what formerly was called inhibition) and the matter would be sent straight to the House of Bishops at its next meeting (following a period of at least sixty days). If the Disciplinary Board votes by the end of this year, that meeting would be the March meeting of the House of Bishops at which Bishop Lawrence would be deposed if the House so votes by a majority vote.

Read it all.

Update: Since I have a lot of email questions on where to find the “new” Title IV canons, one place is here.

A leading cleric has launched a withering attack on the Catholic leaders of a campaign against gay marriage, labelling them “out of touch, arrogant, conceited and rude” and warning that they risk damaging the reputation of the wider Christian community.

In a sermon that exposed the gap between liberal and traditional opinion, the Very Reverend Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin, Glasgow, called the views of senior Catholics on gay marriage “unpleasant and ill-judged”. They “embarrassed” him.

[The] Rev Holdsworth was preaching a month after the Scottish government launched its consultation on same-sex marriages. Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister, said that the Government tended towards the opinion that they should be introduced.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Kelvin Holdsworth is the Provost of the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin in Glasgow.

You can watch and listen to the sermon here under the date of 9 October 2011 (it lasts some 12 minutes). His text is “The Parable of the Wedding Banquet” which is in Matthew 22:1-14.

Clergy of the Diocese of South Carolina are meeting [today] to discuss an Episcopal Church investigation of allegations against the local bishop.

Read it all.

Please pray for our meeting today–thanks; KSH.

Update: I see Saint Michael’s, Charleston, has called for a special parish meeting on all these matters this coming Sunday

Like their secular counterparts, many clergy who devoted their attention to less temporal matters than financial planning now find themselves amid shrinking church budgets and a poor economy being forced to work beyond traditional retirement ages.

It is an especially critical issue in smaller churches that still do not set aside money for clergy retirement. In a 2008 study of Church of Christ clergy in Texas, just a quarter of respondents said they had plans to fully retire.

But it is also a burden for larger, mainline Protestant denominations. As memberships shrink and many older clergy find it financially untenable to retire, even fewer younger clergy are able to find work.

Read it all.